Chapter 22

The Kennedy and Johnson Years

Chapter 22 Sec. 1: The New Frontier

A New Type of Candidate

• John Kennedy was the youngest person ever to be elected President. However, he was not the youngest ever to serve. Theodore Roosevelt became President at age 42 when William McKinley was assassinated. Also, Kennedy was a Roman Catholic, and no Catholic had ever been elected President.

Kennedy’s Domestic Programs

• In a speech early in his presidency, Kennedy said that the nation was poised at the edge of a “New Frontier.” The name stuck. It referred to Kennedy’s proposals to improve the economy, assist the poor, and speed up the space program.

• To help end the economic slump, in 1963 Kennedy proposed a large tax cut over three years. At first, the measure would reduce government income and create a budget deficit. Kennedy believed, however, that the extra cash in taxpayers’ wallets would stimulate the economy and eventually bring in added tax revenues.

Combating Poverty and Inequality

• Kennedy’s ambitious plans for federal education aid and medical care for the elderly both failed in Congress. Some measures did make it through Congress, however. Congress passed both an increase in the minimum wage and the Housing Act of 1961, which provided $4.9 billion for urban renewal.

• In June 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act. Added into the Fair Labor Standards of 1938, a New Deal program, the Equal Pay Act stated that all employees doing substantially the same work in the same work place must be given equal pay.

The Space Program• Following the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957,

government agencies and private industries had been working furiously with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) to place a manned spacecraft in orbit around Earth. Government spending and the future of NASA became uncertain, however, when a task force appointed by Kennedy recommended that NASA concentrate on exploratory space missions without human crews.

• All of that changed in April 1961. The Soviet Union announced that Yuri Gagarin had circled Earth on board the Soviet spacecraft Vostok becoming the first human to travel in space. Gagarin’s flight rekindled Americans’ fears that their technology was falling behind that of the Soviet Union.

The Space Program cont.

• On May 5, 1961, the United States made its own first attempt to send a person into space. Astronaut Alan Shepard made a 15 minute flight that reached an altitude of 115 miles. Unlike Gagarin’s flight, Shepard’s flight did not orbit Earth. Nevertheless, its success convinced Kennedy to move forward. On May 25, Kennedy issued a bold challenge to the nation. Less than a year later, on February 20, 1962, John Glenn successfully completed 3 orbits around Earth and landed in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas. Finally, on July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.

Kennedy is Assassinated

• On November 22, 1963, as Kennedy looked ahead to the reelection campaign the following year, he traveled to Texas to mobilize support. The motorcade slowed as it turned a corner in front of the Texas School Book Depository. Its employees had been sent to lunch so they could watch the event outside. Yet one man stayed behind. From the sixth-floor window, he aimed his rifle. Bullets struck both Connally and Kennedy. Connally would recover from his injuries. The President, slumped over in Jacqueline’s lap, was mortally wounded.

• The motorcade sped to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital. Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:00 P.M.

Kennedy is Assassinated cont.• The prime suspect in Kennedy’s assassination was Lee Harvey

Oswald, a former marine and supporter of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

• Two days after Kennedy’s assassination, the TV cameras rolled as Oswald was being transferred from one jail to another. As the nation watched,, a Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, stepped through the crowd of reporters and fatally shot Oswald.

• On November 29, President Johnson appointed The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was better known as the Warren Commission, after its chairman, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. After months of investigation, the Warren Commission determined that Oswald had acted alone in shooting the President.

Chapter 22Section 2: The Great Society

Johnson’s Great Society

• Johnson’s Great Society was a series of major legislative initiatives that continued into his second term. The Great Society programs included major poverty relief, education aid, healthcare, voting rights, conservation, and beautification projects, urban renewal, and economic development in depressed areas.

The Election of 1964• Johnson’s early successes paved the way for his landslide

victory over Republican Barry Goldwater in the election of 1964. Goldwater, a senator from Arizona, held conservative views that seemed excessive to many Americans, as well as to many members of his won party.

• For example, he opposed civil rights legislation, and he believed that military commanders should be allowed to use nuclear weapons as they saw fit on the battlefield. The Johnson campaign took advantage of voter’s fears of nuclear war. It aired a controversial television commercial in which a little girl’s innocent counting game turned into the countdown for a nuclear explosion.

The Tax Cut

• To gain conservatives’ support for Kennedy’s tax-cut bill, which was likely to bring about a deficit, Johnson also agreed to cut government spending. With that agreement, the measure passed and worked just as planned. When the tax cut went into effect, the Gross National Product (GNP) rose by 7.1 percent in 1964, by 8.1 percent in 1965, and by 9.5 percent in 1966. The deficit, which many people feared would grow, actually shrank because the renewed prosperity generated new tax revenues.

The War on Poverty

• The Economic Opportunity Act, passed in the summer of 1964 was created to combat several causes of poverty, including illiteracy and unemployment.

• Two of the best-known programs created under the act were Head Start and VISTA. Head Start is a preschool program for children from low-income families that also provides healthcare, nutrition services, and social services.

• Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) sent volunteers to help people in poor communities.

Aid to Education

• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provided $1.3 billion in aid to states, based on the number of children in each state from low-income homes.

Medicare and Medicaid

• In 1965, Johnson used his leadership skills to push through Congress two new programs, Medicare and Medicaid.

• Medicare provides hospital and low-cost medical insurance to most Americans age 65 and older.

• Medicaid provides low-cost health insurance coverage to poor Americans of any age who cannot afford their own private health insurance.

The Immigration Act of 1965

• The Immigration Act of 1965 replaced the varying quotas with a limit of 20,000 immigrants per year from any one country outside the Western Hemisphere. In addition, the act set overall limits of 170,000 immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,00 from the Western Hemisphere. Family members of United States citizens were exempted from the quotas, as were political refugees. In the 1960’s, some 350,000 immigrants entered the United States each year; in the 1970’s, the number rose to more than 400,000 a year.

Social Issues and Criminal Procedure• In an explosive 1962 case, the Court ruled that religious prayer in public

schools was unconstitutional according to the First Amendment principle of separation of church and state.

• Mapp v. Ohio (1961) established the exclusionary rule, which states that evidence seized illegally cannot be used in trial. The Court’s decision in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) states that suspects in criminal cases who could not afford a lawyer had the right to free legal aid. In Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), the justices ruled that accused individuals had to be given access to an attorney while being questioned.

• The Court’s decision in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) stated that a suspect must be warned of his or her rights before being questioned. As a result of this Miranda rule, police must inform accused persons that they have the right to remain silent; that anything they say can be used against them in court; that they have a right to an attorney; and that if they cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for them.

Effects Of The Great Society

• For decades following the Great Society, a major political debate continued over the criticism that antipoverty programs encouraged poor people to become dependent on government aid and created successive generations of families on welfare instead of in jobs.

• Nevertheless, the number of Americans living in poverty in the United States was cut in half during the 1960’s and early 1970’s.

Chapter 22

Section 3: Foreign Policy in the Early 1960’s

The Bay of Pigs Invasion

• Kennedy’s first foreign crisis arose in Cuba, an island about 90 miles off the Florida coast. After Kennedy became President, he was informed about a plan that President Eisenhower had approved in 1960. Under this plan, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was training a group of Cubans to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. The training took place in Guatemala, a nearby Central American country. Kennedy and his advisors expected the Cuban people to help the invaders defeat Castro.

• Despite such reservations and those of some military leaders, Kennedy accepted the advice of the CIA and agreed to push ahead with the invasion plan.

A Military Catastrophe

• The Bay of Pigs invasion, shown on the map on the bottom of page 752, took place on April 17, 1961. It was a total disaster. An airstrike failed to destroy Cuba’s air force, and Cuban troops were more than a match for the 1,500 U.S.-backed invaders. When Kennedy’s advisors urged him to use American planes to provide air cover for the attackers, he refused. Rather than continue a hopeless effort to overthrow another nation’s government was exposed to the world.

The Berlin Crisis• Kennedy feared that the Soviet effort inGermany was part of a

larger plan to take over the rest of Europe. Adding to his fears, his first meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna, Austria, in June 1961, went poorly. When Khrushchev made a public ultimatum regarding Germany, Kennedy felt bullied by the Soviet leader.

• Upon returning home, Kennedy decided to show the Soviets that the United States would not be intimidated. He asked Congress for a huge increase of more than $3 billion for defense. He doubled the number of young men being drafted into the armed services and called up reserve forces for active duty. He argued that the United States had to be prepared if the crisis led to nuclear war.

The Berlin Crisis cont.

• In August 1961, the Soviets responded by building a wall to separate Communist and non-Communist Berlin. The Berlin Wall became a somber symbol of the Cold War. Still, by stopping the flow of East Germans to the West, the Soviet Union had found a way to avoid a showdown over East Berlin.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

• On October 16, 1962, photographs taken from an American spy plane revealed that the Soviets were building missile bases on Cuban soil-only about 90 miles from the island of Key West, Florida. What followed was the Cuban Missile Crisis, a terrifying standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union that brought the superpowers to the brink of nuclear war. The Soviets intended their missiles in Cuba to counter American missiles presented a direct challenge to which he must respond.

The World Waits

• The naval quarantine went into effect on Wednesday, October 24. On October 25, a Soviet ship reached the quarantine line and was stopped by the navy. Because it was carrying only oil, it was allowed to proceed. Meanwhile, a dozen more Soviet cargo ships were steaming toward the blockade. Then, to everyone’s relief, the Soviet ships suddenly reversed direction. Khrushchev had called them back.

Disaster Avoided

• On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a long letter in which he pledged to remove the missiles if Kennedy promised that the United States would end the quarantine and stay out of Cuba. A second letter delivered the next day demanded that the Unites States remove its missiles from Turkey in exchange for the withdrawal of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Kennedy publicly accepted the terms of the first note. He responded to the second note through secret negotiations and eventually met the demand. With that the crisis ended.

• The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer than ever before to nuclear war. Kennedy emerged from the confrontation as a hero.

The Aftereffects

• The Limited Test Ban Treaty, banned nuclear testing above the ground. By doing so, it sought to eliminate the radioactive fall-out that threatened to contaminate human, animal, and plant life. The treaty still permitted underground nuclear testing, and the United States and the Soviet Union continued to build bigger and bigger bombs.

The Alliance for Progress• The Soviet Union and the United States competed not only by building up their

military forces, but also by seeking allies in the developing countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Many of these countries were terribly poor. Communist revolutionary movements in some of these countries were gaining support by promising people a better future. To counter these revolutionary movements, Kennedy tried to promote “peaceful revolution”-that is, to help build stable governments that met the needs of their citizens and also were allied with the democratic countries of the West. Two months after taking office, Kennedy called on all the people of the Western Hemisphere to join in a new Alliance for Progress. The Alliance would be a vast cooperative effort to satisfy the basic needs of people in North, Central and South America for homes, work, land, health, and schools.

• The administration pledged $20 billion over ten years to promote economic development and social reform and to prevent revolution. Soon, however, Latin Americans began to question the benefits of the Alliance. Some viewed it simply as a tool of the United States to stop the spread of Communism. Because of such doubts, the Alliance for Progress never lived up to Kennedy’s expectations.

The Peace Corps

• The Peace Corps was a program that sent volunteers abroad as educators, health workers, and technicians to help developing nations around the world.